Stratford is crowdfunding to rebuild the American Shakespeare Theatre — starting with an arts and culture festival

By Tess Vrbin

Hartford Courant|

Jun 12, 2019 | 11:54 AM

Milford resident Johanna Maciag looks out over the site where the former American Shakespeare Theatre stood before it was destroyed Sunday morning by fire. "This was where I was introduced to Shakespeare in a real way," said Maciag who first came to the theater as a child. (Mark Mirko / Hartford Courant)

Five months after arsonists destroyed the American Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford citizens are raising money to rebuild the theater, by way of an arts and culture festival scheduled for September on the grounds where the theater stood.

The event, scheduled for Sept. 6-8, “means that the arts are alive and well in Stratford,” Mayor Laura Hoydick said.

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The festival, called 2019 Phoenix Season with the theme of “Arts from the Ashes,” is a joint effort by the town of Stratford and community enhancement nonprofit Stratford Forward. According to a press release, the festival will include music and theater performances, art exhibits, food trucks, dance and acting classes, activities for children, morning yoga and “an interfaith convocation hosted by Stratford’s clergy.”

The GoFundMe campaign, created June 2 with a $50,000 goal, raised more than $5,000 by June 3 and more than $9,500 by Tuesday. The organizers are rewarding donors for contributions of specific amounts with gifts such as free t-shirts, free entry to the festival and up to $200 in food truck credit.

Three donations of $1,000 each are the largest contributions so far.

Police arrested three teenage suspects in April for intentionally burning down the theater. Chris Sakowicz and Vincent Keller, both 18, were arrested and charged with first-degree arson, first-degree burglary with a deadly weapon, first-degree reckless endangerment and second-degree criminal trespass. Both are due in court July 8 in Bridgeport and have pleaded not guilty to all charges. Keller has been released from police custody and Sakowicz has not.

A third teen, not identified because he was underage, was later arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit third-degree arson, third-degree criminal trespass, third-degree burglary and third-degree criminal mischief.

Sakowicz and Keller were also charged in April with setting one of the fires at the Silver Sands State Park in Milford in late March.

Stratford’s 2019 budget was finalized before the theater burned down on Jan. 13, so crowdfunding is the only way to book performances for the festival this year, Executive Director J. Sibley Law wrote on the GoFundMe page. The coordinators are reaching out to businesses and corporations for potential sponsorships in addition to fundraising online, and there have been several verbal commitments for in-kind donations, Law said in an interview.

July 8 is the ideal fundraising deadline, he said, and $50,000 will be enough to have three stages at the festival: a main theater stage, a music stage and a children’s stage. The coordinators are determined to hold the festival with whatever amount of money they raise, but the amount determines the magnitude and amount of activities, he said.

Including the festival in the town budget in the future "is open for discussion” and depends on how it goes this year, said Michael Downes, Hoydick’s chief of staff.

In the weeks immediately after the fire, members of local arts groups formed an executive committee and met regularly to decide what to do with the grounds, Law said. Hoydick created a task force in January with the same purpose, and she said in April that the theater grounds should be used for something cultural.

The task force has been collecting Stratford citizens’ ideas and will present the data later this month, Hoydick said.

Once the executive committee decided to hold a festival, they started collaborating with the mayor’s office and members of the task force in April, Stratford arts coordinator Margaret Bodell said. Bodell is in charge of reaching out to non-performing artists and said she has booked more than 30 so far.

Stratford’s economic and community development office partners with groups in the community — in this case, Stratford Forward — to hold festivals in an initiative called Celebrate Stratford. Examples include the Main Street Festival in partnership with the Stratford Rotary Club and the Latin Music Festival in partnership with the Hispanic Heritage Association, Bodell said.

“They’re a really great highlight of our community," Hoydick said. "I expect this to be as well because there are a lot of great minds collaborating.”

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The town has held an arts and culture festival in its downtown market in years past, and there was already an event planned for Sept. 7 when Stratford Forward expressed interest in using the theater grounds, Hoydick said. She invited the nonprofit, just established this year, to work with her office so public works and police for the event would be more affordable, she said.

The American Shakespeare Theatre was built in 1955, created by a prestigious group of professionals with private funding. It was modeled after London’s Globe Theatre, which burned down in 1613. Prominent actors such as Katharine Hepburn, Christopher Plummer and James Earl Jones, performed at the venue that once was the second-most popular tourist attraction in the state, behind the Mystic Seaport.

The theater declared bankruptcy in 1982 and was later taken over by the state. After the state paid the debt and leased the building to a nonprofit group, the theater was closed in 1989 but remained important to the arts community locally and nationally.

“Heartbreaking,” actor and playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda tweeted the day of the fire.

Actress Sharon Lawrence, known for her roles in the TV show “NYPD Blue”and the 1987 Broadway revival of “Cabaret," donated $100 to the GoFundMe. According to a press release, Lawrence said the Stratford community’s efforts give her “great hope for the future.”

“The arts help us stay attached to our souls," Lawrence said. "When this national landmark dedicated to the arts burned down, we felt it deep down.”